Day: June 23, 2017

The Global Innovation Index attempts to assess the innovation performance of some 127 countries across a wide range of factors, made up of some 81 “pillars”.

Australia comes in at #23, down 4 places from last year. While it scored quite strongly on innovation inputs, coming in at #12, its ranking for innovation outputs – what innovations it produces – came in at only #30. And, in terms of innovation efficiency – the ratio of the innovation output score over the innovation input score, coming in at #76.[1]

Much of the narrative of the report is directed to exploring and promoting innovation in agriculture given the growing global population and the threat to food security posed by climate change.

The introductory overview chapter reports that there are indications of a pick-up of global economic activity. However, investment and productivity increases are still at historic lows. It also reports concerns around faltering economic integration; trade growth being around 2.5% in 2013 – 2014, but falling to 1.5% in 2016.

R & D growth is still lower than before 2011. In addition to reduced public R & D, growth in business R & D has been decreasing from 6% in 2013 to about 4.5% in 2015. The authors of the report call therefore for:

policy actions that foster human capital, research and development (R&D), and other innovation inputs and outputs, as captured by the GII, are now required. Indeed, avail-able economic evidence shows that an increase in R&D can effectively translate into an increase of GDP in the medium and longer term.

The question for Australia may be whether the Productivity Commission’s proposals meet those prescriptions?

The rankings are not strictly comparable as there have been adjustments and refinements to the framework and “technical factors” over the years and 4 countries included in 2016 dropped out while 3 new countries were introduced. ?